Immigration and Business: The Impacts Immigrants Have on Business

Businesses hire the best talent possible. The best talent isn’t always national talent, so businesses will look towards foreigners to fill the gap. Immigrants make up a large portion of the business world in the United States.

Small and large business owners that hire immigrants must know the contributions that they have made in some of the world’s largest sectors: science, medicine and technology.

Immigrants Lead to Top-tier Companies in the United States

Top-tier companies, those with billion-dollar revenues, often have a founder who wasn’t born in the United States. Statistics show that 51% of founders of billion-dollar companies are immigrants or born outside of the United States.

These companies have had a major impact on the U.S. economy.

The trend of foreign founders has led other countries to open their doors to immigrants who want to start their own business. Canada, for example, has been working on policies to attract immigrants who want to open businesses in the country.

“The Canadian government is always interested in supporting individuals who have a goal of integrating and benefiting the Canadian economy – be it the case of immigrants who desire to start their own businesses on the Canadian territory or individuals looking for investment opportunities,” states Ronen Kurzfeld, an immigration lawyer Toronto.

Companies that have immigrant founders include:

SpaceX

Uber

Stripe

PayPal

CloudFlare

Many of the founders from the companies above attended top-tier colleges in the United States before founding their respective companies.

Immigrants Help Companies Grow by Landing in Key Roles

Immigrants help fill the skill-gap that is featured across the world. Google, Microsoft, Facebook and thousands of other companies aim to do one thing: hire the best of the best. Sometimes, the best means that the employee is an immigrant.

Studies show that 70% of the billion-dollar businesses have immigrant workers in key roles.

When an immigrant lands in a founder role, this is often a result of the founder attending an Ivy League school in the United States. Statistics show that around 50% of all of these founders came into the United States on student visas.

These individuals were able to accel at their respective schools, growing and taking advantages of opportunities that came their way.

Elon Musk came to the United States on a visa. He was born in South Africa and entered the United States from Canada. He is the co-founder of Tesla, SpaceX and helped co-found PayPal.

Companies often hire these rare talents to fill their ranks. Students that have an outstanding education and talent often work for companies on a visa until they’re eventually granted citizenship in the United States

Immigrants Want to Create Businesses More Than US Citizens

Immigrant-started businesses have resulted in over 33,000 permanent jobs. Forbes reports that 40% of companies on the Fortune 500 had at least one immigrant as a founder, or someone that is the child of an immigrant.

Statistically, immigrants are 200% more likely to open their own business than people born in the United States.

Immigrants play a vital role in job creation in the United States. The issue that immigrants face is that only 7% of the green cards granted in the United States are for economic reasons. Many of the immigrants that start businesses have difficulty finding an easy path to stay in the country no matter their importance in economic growth.

Other countries, including Canada, give out more green cards than the United States in an effort to attract highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs.

Some countries have implemented initiatives that aim to offer highly skilled workers an easy path to citizenship – even temporary citizenship. These countries often provide 50% of green cards for economic reasons.

Many businesses and states lack manual workers to fill their ranks.

There is also a direct correlation with positions filled by immigrants to jobs created in other industries. For example, manual labor in the farming industry is often filled by immigrants. Statistics show that for every one immigrant that fills farm jobs, three jobs are created.

Immigrants play a vital role in the economic growth of an economy.

Businesses that hire immigrants with specialized skills are able to grow faster, expand and often fill vital roles in their businesses with immigrants. Positions that include manual labor, which fewer Americans want to fill, foreign workers often fill the gap.